


The Moonmaid

by ContessaQuill



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And so is Robb Stark, Freefolk Culture & Customs, I'm going to stop now, smut smut smut, winter is coming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 11:34:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14212254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ContessaQuill/pseuds/ContessaQuill
Summary: Freydis is one of the Free Folk. When her clan is butchered by those they buried long ago, she flees the only way she knows: South. While she has only ever heard of the legendary Kings of Winter from her tribe's story keeper, Freydis recognizes a direwolf when she comes face to face with one. She may even come to love him.Robb remembered one of the many stories Old Nan used to tell him and his siblings in front of the fireplace- the tale of the Night’s King and his beautiful, cold corpse bride who had stolen his heart and soul and seed and given him ruin in return. His queen with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars.





	The Moonmaid

Robb Stark lowered the crossbow with a cocky grin. _A clean shot_ , Ser Rodrick would say. He looked over his shoulder at his hunting companion. Theon was quick with a bow and arrow, but his thoughts were still with the pretty tavern girl in the winter town and what she could do with that mouth of hers, not the frosty labyrinth of the Wolfswood. Jon and his mare had stayed with his father and Ser Jory, who were watering their horses down by the stream. 

“Impressive, my lord,” Theon drawled lazily as he unstrung his bow and went up to the dead boar and pulled his hunting dagger from its leather sheath. “Give it a few more years and you’ll be a fine marksman, yet.” 

Robb took the insult with stride, grinning wolfishly. “You might have had a small chance at besting me, if you hadn’t been thinking with your cock, Greyjoy.” 

Theon laughed. “And you ought to think more with yours, Stark. I’m telling you, there’s that one wench at the Smoking Log with teats like—” 

A guttural shout ripped through the winter stillness as surely as the arrow that sliced through the air and missed Theon’s ear by mere inches. “Bloody fuck!” 

A moment later, they were upon them, swarming them like vultures circling a fresh kill. There were four of them. Men with grizzled, brutal faces and matted hair, bundled up in thick bearskins, and shrieking in a chopped language that sounded as harsh as the howling winds of winter themselves. _Wildings_ , Robb thought, a whisper of fear slithering down his spine. He’d never seen one, only known them for the villains in Old Nan’s bedtime stories and for the distant threat they posed to the Wall and the Night’s Watch. 

Robb’s gloved hands creaked as he drew the sturdy sword his father had commissioned for his name day. The blade was one of Mikken's finest works with a direwolf-shaped pommel and his house’s words engraved along the guard— worthy of a lord. It had never seen battle, just like its wielder. True enough, he had taken part in one or two fights outside the sparring ring— boyish skirmishes that ended with a black eye or a busted lip. 

One of the wild brutes broke from the others and charged at the young lord, hacking viciously at him with his chipped club. Robb dodged and parried the blows the hulking wildling dealt him, while Theon blew the horn to alert Lord Stark and his men. The two remaining wildling rushed to their brethren’s aid. One of their spears threatened to impale Robb’s back, but Theon slashed the attacker’s throat with the hunting dagger he had used to skin the boar and watched as he crumpled, gurgling and choking on his own blood. 

_“My lord!”_

_“Robb!”_

The crunch of horses’ hooves on snow made Robb look up. His lord father, Ser Jory and Jon crashed through the tree line on horseback and Jory’s huffing destrier ran down the archer who had turned craven and tried to flee the forest clearing. Bone-carved spears and club were no match against cold steel. 

Spitting on the young lord’s well-made buckskin boots, the wildling ranted and spewed a string of curses in that strange tongue. Robb felt rather than saw his father behind him. “Were you hurt, son?” Lord Eddard asked quietly. Robb shook his head, the hand that held the sword shaking slightly from the strain and the blood rushing in his ears, heart hammering away against his rib cage. He caught Jon staring at the blood-sprayed snow with none of his usual sulkiness. 

The brute who was held at swordpoint made an angry noise as he pawed at his thigh where a gash wound was steadily seeping blood. Greasy blue and white war paint crumbled from his craggy face— hastily applied a long time ago and mostly washed away by sweat and rain. 

“What is he saying?” Jon piped up.

“He’s speaking the old tongue,” his father said. “The language of the First Men.” 

“By the gods. Wildings so far south from the Wall.” Ser Jory rasped. “Winter must truly be afoot. It’s a bad omen, the smallfolk say.” 

“I’ve never taken you for a superstitious fishwife, Cassel.” Theon sniggered and lowered himself to clean his bloody dagger on the dead wildling’s bearskin. 

“What are we to do with him, my lord?” Ser Jory looked at the wild man like one might look at a stray dog, mouth curling in disgust, sword at the ready. 

Lord Eddard’s brow crinkled. He turned to his eldest son. “Robb,” he said calmly. “A man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.” It was a lesson Robb had repeated to himself a dozen times during studies with Maester Luwin. He would be lord of this house one day. As a lad of six and ten he could no longer cling to his dreams of boyhood like a child clung to his mother’s skirts. 

He made himself look into the wild man’s eyes as he pulled back the sword. It felt heavier than before, laden with a man’s duty. Swallowing was harder as well. The blade cut through ribs, flesh and muscle as it found the heart. Robb didn’t know what to feel as he freed his once shiny new sword from the man’s chest and looked at the ugliness that now stained the metal. Would it get easier, he asked himself. 

After a moment, his father’s large hand came to rest on his shoulder. The part of him that held a youth’s rebelliousness wanted to tell him that he wasn’t a little boy to be coddled anymore, not when the first man he had killed was still warm at his feet. Not a man, he reminded himself, a wildling. 

He was about to turn to his horse, when he heard a small noise. A whimper, akin to the sound a small, wounded woodland creature would make when a huntsman missed his mark. The others had heard it too, he knew. The bush behind the trampled wilding rustled. Someone or something was hiding there. 

Theon stalked toward the noise and disappeared in the underbrush. 

“There’s more of them!” They heard him shout. He emerged from the evergreen, dragging a slip of a girl by the hair after him as she struggled feebly, clawing at his arms. She was limping. Something seemed to be wrong with her leg— it was twisted at an odd angle and looked quite painful. Huddled into a mass of rabbit furs, she wore gray woolen breeches tucked into blockish, fur-lined boots and a coarse-spun tunic with bone fastenings. Silvery blond hair reached down to her hip in a tangled rope, leaves sticking out here and there. She was close to Sansa in age, if not older— perhaps five and ten. 

He remembered one of the many stories Old Nan used to tell him and his siblings in front of the fireplace, the tale of the Night’s King and his beautiful, cold corpse bride who had stolen his heart and soul and seed and given him ruin in return. _With skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars._

“A girl,” Jon breathed as though he’d never seen one of her kind before. 

“What a scrappy little thing,” Theon murmured. She let out a pained cry as he dumped her at Lord Eddard’s feet, long, callused fingers knotted in her furs. She didn’t meet their eyes and curled her injured leg close to the rest of her body as if to conserve space. Robb found he didn’t like that expression on her, his hands balling to fists at the way Theon had handled her. A wildling she might be, but she was still a girl— hurt and vulnerable. It wasn’t honorable. 

The Lord of Winterfell’s stern face softened the tiniest bit. She reminded him of Sansa— a shy little creature. “Who are you, child?” He asked gently, but she didn’t let on that she’d heard him speak. 

“Can you speak the common tongue?” Again, she didn’t react. His father sighed. “This won’t do.” For a moment, Robb wondered if she was deaf or simple-minded like Hodor, the stable boy, but then she whispered something in her harsh, foreign tongue and it sounded like a prayer. The sight made something in his chest tighten. He usually only felt this protective of his younger brothers and sisters. Her skin looked as cold as ice. It was too pale— unhealthy and streaked with dirt and old and new bruises, her cheekbones were peaked from hunger, her bloodshot, blue eyes too big for her frightened little face. Her traveling companions hadn’t been kind to her. 

“We’ll take her back to the castle,” Lord Eddard said. “A maester needs to look at that leg of hers. And a warm bath.”

“You’re taking her with us? She’s a filthy wildling. These barbarians attacked us. Wildlings deserve no mercy—” Theon had a look of outrage on his handsome face, his bow drawn, arrowhead pointed at the back of her fur hood. ”—my lord,” he added reluctantly. 

“We are not the Night’s Watch,” Robb said brusquely as he stepped forward to put himself between the older boy and the shivering wilding girl. “And you won’t be needing that.” There was a challenge in his eyes as he stared him down. 

Theon sneered. “Who’s now thinking with his cock now, eh?” 

Robb’s ears turned red. He hadn’t been thinking about that. Girls liked him, they always had. And he very much liked them. The first and only time he had touched a girl inappropriately was the night of the last harvest feast when he had drunken too much ale and one of the prettier kitchen maids had cornered him and taken him in her mouth. The frenzied fumbling that had followed was clumsy and artless and he definitely wasn’t comfortable contemplating it in front of his lord father. 

“Lower your bow, lad,” Lord Eddard commanded. “There will be no more bloodshed today. The girl has hurt no one. She will ride with Jory.” 

Robb crouched down in front of her. She watched him warily as he slowly reached out and she flinched, recoiling from him in fear, pupils blown wide. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered to her as one might speak to a spooked horse. Unusually bright blue eyes narrowed at the placating, open palm he presented to her. 

“Come on,” he encouraged her with a crooked half-smile that never failed to make the serving girls back at the castle swoon and giggle. She did no such thing, but neither did she go back to cowering from him. 

_“Valdyr munu hafa þik.”_ Her lips were frozen blue and chapped from the cold. He was taken aback when her small hand shot out, stubby nails brushing over the silver pin at his shoulder in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head. _“Valdyr?”_ She was frowning gravely, eyes flitting between him and the pin.

“I don’t know what that means,” Robb said. 

_“Stark.”_


End file.
